Rift
by VogonProstetnicMo
Summary: A Pineswap AU. How do you live as half of yourself?
1. Chapter 1

_And if you're in love then you are the lucky one_

 _'Cause most of us are bitter over someone_

 _-Daughter, Youth_

 _¶_

 _I never was the one who was good at this sort of thing. You know that. This has never been my strong suit. You, you were good at this. It was you. It was always you. I never meant for this to happen. Oh please. Just make it stop. I never wanted this._

 _I never wanted this._

Silent tears chased down Mabel's face as loopy fluid letters traced across the lines in the journal lying open on the table. The pages began shimmering from something other than the glitter subtly splashed across the cover in a delicate rainbow of swirls. A heaving sob wracked her body, and the writing grew unsteadier as her vision blurred.

 _Please forgive me. Please... come home._

Her hand began shaking uncontrollably, and she convulsively clenched it into a fist, balling it to stop the shaking, pulling her arm inside her sweater, dropping the purple pen onto the tear-stained page. _Mabel isn't here. She's in Sweater Town._ Except this time there wouldn't be any way of leaving Sweater Town. She dropped her head between her knees, hugging them to herself and rocking softly back and forth, hiding the cascade of tears, curling up into a tiny ball of concentrated misery. A straggling strand of dark hair fell from behind her ear. Her small body shook with sobs as she released herself into the cathartic arms of sorrow. Helplessness. _Just show me what to do._ A gulping, gasping swallow. Lifting her head, she felt the hot tears trickle down the sides of her face, looking at the hard cement of the ceiling, willing herself to stop. _Please._

Slowly dropping her head, she rested her chin on her knees, staring at her pen for what felt like an eternity. Damp eyelashes closed over large, dark eyes as she breathed out, concentrating on the rhythm of her lungs. _Hush little baby, don't you cry, Momma's gonna sing you a lullaby~_ She shivered. Tucking the sweater more tightly around herself, she pushed out a shuddering sigh. _Quiet now, child._ Child. He'd just been a child, hadn't he? Well. Not quite. When they'd stopped talking, he'd been eighteen. But it felt like yesterday. The aching burning pain of the wound was still fresh. It was hard to get over something that never scarred over. It was opened fresh with every new thing, every beauty she encountered, as she turned to show her brother, to share her excitement and exuberance and obsession- only to find he wasn't there. He'd been gone for years. That changed a person. She hiccuped, a quiet sound that seemed to rend the stillness that she was becoming increasingly aware of.

And now- she closed her eyes as a new pain stabbed searingly across her chest. Now he was gone for good. The final scrap of hope she had held onto all these years- the scrap of hope that made her quintessentially _Mabel_ \- had died. The spark had gone out. They had passed the point of no return.

This kind of thing didn't happen to people. It didn't. It couldn't. She rotated her body to see the splintered triangle littering the floor, tiny flickers of blue light still arcing through the fragments. As broken as their relationship. It did and it had.

Lifting a trembling hand, she inspected it from the residual light. The slim white fingers were quivering in the sickly blue light, declaring their guilt loudly in the silence. The lines across her palm swam again as the tears began afresh. _Oh Dipper._

 _Dipper. Please come home._

 _Just come home._


	2. Chapter 2

_Well, I've lost it all, I'm just a silhouette_

 _A lifeless face that you'll soon forget_

 _-Daughter, Youth_

Mabel hugged the sweater more tightly to herself, wrapping her arms around her knees. _So cold..._

She didn't have Dipper's drive to go and work all the time. Not even when she wasn't spending her days quietly mourning the loss of the one thing she held dear despite the wedge the years had driven between them. She didn't have the strength to go chop wood. Which was why she was throwing the last tiny stick on the dying embers in the fireplace. Well. At least there wouldn't be any smoke if there wasn't any fire.

 _That's the kind of thing Dipper would say._

Well, of course it was. They were twins, after all. And now she was crying again, and it was hard to tell if the uncontrollable shivering was from her tears or from the cold. Dropping her head down again, she let the hot tears seep through the fabric, sparkling as they fell.

It felt like hours had passed, but it was probably only a few minutes. She couldn't tell time any more. It just... didn't matter. Everything felt like waiting. A dead stillness that didn't really have an end. No point to make for. No beacon shining on farther shores. Swallowing thickly, she slowly, stiffly, shifted. Uncurling herself, she set slow, reluctant feet on the floor and stood. She needed to eat. She wasn't hungry, but she did it on autopilot. She always had been an emotional eater, and she knew it.

Opening a cupboard lethargically revealed nothing new. She knew that one was empty. It was always the first one she tried, though. Old habits die hard, she supposed. A maxim. Just like _Curiousity killed the cat._ No. She cut herself off from that line of thinking again. She wasn't going to go down that road again today. Maybe tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. But for right now... she was going to focus on something else.

It had been two weeks since Dipper's disappearance into the portal device. She'd moped for the first few days, going into hardcore grieving. Despair. Depression. The lot of it. She'd shifted into a stubborn denial of the facts for the time being, just to change it up a bit. And with that came the emotional eating. Dipper had clearly been stockpiling for some kind of apocalypse in here, but that didn't mean that he'd prepared food supplies. At least, not at this location. _Maybe he hid that somewhere else?_ But she didn't have the energy-didn't have the _motivation_ \- to seek it out right now.

Sighing, she pulled open another drawer. Empty. Empty, empty, empty. Just like her soul. Her lip quivered again, and she pushed back yet another round of tears, swallowing them.

Rolling back on her heels, she sighed.

She guessed this was it. She would have to go into town.

Pulling on Dipper's oversized winter coat, she tugged the hood over her hair to protect it from the winter wind and stepped out the door.


End file.
